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Barcelona terror attack: Spain hunts for van driver

Barcelona terror attack: Spain hunts for van driver

Spain mounts a sweeping anti-terror operation after a suspected Islamist militant drove a van into crowds in Barcelona, killing 13 people before fleeing, in what police suspect was one of multiple planned attacks.

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Barcelona Terror attack: Aussies injured

Barcelona Terror attack: Aussies injured

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has confirmed three Australians have been hurt when a van mowed people down in a popular tourist spot, killing more than a dozen people and injuring around one hundred more.

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The North generates about $100 million profit each year from the joint project and the South makes quadruple that amount, according to Yang Moo Jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

The cooling tower at the Yongbyon nuclear reactor in North Korea is demolished in 2008. Photo: Reuters

About 200,000 North Koreans, including workers and their families, depend on the Gaeseong industrial zone for income, Professor Yang said.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula are the highest at least since 2010, after North Korea detonated a nuclear weapon in February and said annual US-South Korea military drills that run until the end of April had brought the region to the brink of war.

Two US Navy destroyers have been sent to the western Pacific to respond to missile threats, Pentagon spokesman George Little said on Tuesday.

Kim Jong Un's North Korean regime said it would restart all facilities at the Yongbyon nuclear site, including a reactor that generates spent plutonium fuel rods.

It was closed six years ago as part of a deal with the US, South Korea, China, Russia and Japan to end North Korea's nuclear ambitions in exchange for energy aid.

North Korea has 24 to 42 kilograms of plutonium from the Yongbyon reactor, enough to produce four to eight nuclear bombs, according to estimates from Stanford University physicist Siegfried Hecker, who visited the facilities in 2010.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said it would be a "serious step" if North Korea violates its obligations by restarting the nuclear facilities.

Tensions last rose to this level in 2010, after a South Korean warship was sunk, killing 46 sailors. Eight months later, North Korea shelled a South Korean border island, killing four people.

Kim's regime last month cut off a military hot line with South Korea, put artillery forces on high alert and threatened pre-emptive nuclear strikes.